Adobe Needs Better Security

Last week Adobe announced that there was a serious security flaw in it almost universally used Reader and Acrobat software. Their recommendation is to turn off JavaScript in the program. I didn’t even know that Acrobat could run JavaScript and I tried to think of one reason that it would need to have it for me and I couldn’t think of any. Who needs JavaScript in a PDF? I’m sure there a few cases, but I’ll bet not many.

I found where it was and turned it off and now anytime I close a PDF I get an annoying error message that says I have JavaScript turned off and that my documents may not behave correctly and that I should turn it on. Not once has a document that I’ve used not worked correctly.

With Acrobat, Flash and all of their other very popular software Adobe is going to find itself a bigger and bigger target of these scum. I don’t think they have ever had to think about security like this before, but they will now.

Hey Adobe, here’s a start, turn off JavaScript by default. Why have something turned on automatically that can be a huge security hole if it’s not used much? When it’s (rarely) needed make it easily (and temporarily by default) turned on.